Notes from the Editor

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the new Talking Leaves. With this issue, we introduce several major changes:

Completely virgin-tree-free paper stock, of a much higher quality than our previous newsprint stock. This is Vanguard Recycled-Plus, made of hemp and post-consumer fiber by Living Tree Paper Company, whose founder/director, Carolyn Moran, started Talking Leaves in 1989 and guided it as publisher and editor through its first eight years. When she attempted to switch Talking Leaves to virgin-tree-free paper (containing no virgin tree fiber) in the mid-1990s, she discovered that the alternative-fiber paper then available jammed her printer's presses, so she decided to start her own paper business, which soon took on a life of its own and absorbed most her time and energy. We have used her tree-free cover stock since she invited Lost Valley to assume the role of TL publisher in late 1997, and we are happy to finally be able to print the entire magazine using her paper.

A more conservative print run. Printing on an offset (instead of web) press, on higher-quality, more expensive paper, costs more. Therefore, we are printing fewer extra copies, and will be giving out sample copies less freely. We have also raised the cover price. Even at the new cover price, however, newsstand sales will just barely cover our printing costs for the copies we send to the newsstand market (because of discounts to distributors and unsold copies). By subscribing to TL, you not only save money yourself but provide the support we need to keep going.

A quarterly schedule. We'll be producing a new issue at the beginning of every month containing a solstice or equinox, allowing us to stay better connected to the seasons of our own and our readers' lives, and to better reflect the flow of the seasons in the places we live.

More compact. We're making each issue more readable by keeping it slightly shorter, which is easier to do with a more frequent schedule. Since TL contains very little advertising, those forty instead of fifty-six pages will still be rich with material (if the current issue is any indication, we don't think anyone will notice a difference, unless it's that Talking Leaves is now thankfully easier to finish reading cover-to-cover).

Flexible "focus areas" instead of "themes" for each issue. We'll suggest some topics for contributors to address, but each issue will develop more organically, holding less strictly to pre-set themes, and reflecting more closely what we have received and what we've been experiencing.

Greater direct inspiration from Lost Valley life. Many of you receive Talking Leaves because you've become part of the extended family of Lost Valley Educational Center by attending programs here, becoming a supporting member, and/or joining in our work or in our lives in some way. Even those of you who have never been to Lost Valley, and are simply part of the larger network of people interested and involved in the work of developing "ecological culture," presumably read Talking Leaves because it owes its existence to real-life experience in an actual place. In this and future issues, we'll be sharing more of what that experience is (see the articles on pages 18 through 25). And we'll continue to offer perspectives and experiences from other friends, near and far-those who, whether they know us personally or not, feel aligned with the spirit of TL and offer to share their work with us.

About This Issue

"Food, Sustenance, and Spirit," our primary pre-announced focus area for this issue, is obviously so broad a subject that no collection of articles about it could ever be comprehensive. In recent months, a number of excellent food-related pieces have been written and published--particularly addressing the issues of hunger, globalization, genetic modification, and similar big-picture themes. We've decided to offer writing and perspectives here that cannot be found as easily elsewhere--stories that focus, for the most part, on the personal, while still reflecting the "big picture."

It was not easy to decide to exclude a long article we received about the new Farm Bill, or to resist the urge to ask reprint permission for David Borglum's "Hunger and the Environment" article (from the December 2001 issue of his EcoChurch Resources newsletter-email him at [email protected] for a copy), or to not follow up on this provocative passage from the article "Global Terrorists Threaten American Food Supply" by JJ Haapala: "Imagine headlines reading, 'Terrorists spray 46 billion tons of agricultural chemicals on our nation's farmland'; 'Terrorists contaminate 98 percent of US groundwater'; 'Terrorists destroy three billion tons of agricultural topsoil'; 'Terrorists eliminate 90 percent of the mineral nutrition in meat, fruit, and vegetables'; or "Terrorists introduce genetically engineered fragments into 30,000 food products.' Now replace the word 'terrorists' with 'our modern agricultural system' and the headlines are accurate." (This appeared on p. 7 of the December 1, 2001 issue of In Good Tilth, available from 470 Lancaster Dr. NE, Salem, OR 97301.)

However, the material we have been able to include here brings food "close to home" in ways that seem unique, and that correspond to Talking Leaves' natural niche (see pages 7-17, and also 18-19, 22). In future issues, we'll have plenty of opportunity to explore this subject further.

Our other section, "Grief and Hope," continues a theme from our Winter issue. In it, a couple close friends of Lost Valley share experiences that, in a troubled world, are inspiring testaments to the potential for healing and the power of love (see pages 26-35). We hope we are only the first of many publications to share, in depth, the remarkable story of The Superheroes told here by Ethan Hughes.

As always, thank you for reading TL, and we appreciate your support in whatever form you can give it.

Happy Spring.